** Man or Astro-Man?

EEVIAC

(Touch & Go)

When you're working a field as formally limited as intergalactic psychosurf, you've got to tweak it with as many nuances as possible to create a fresh veneer. This time around the Alabama foursome, who gleefully fracture their twang rock fetishes, enter the world of ones and zeroes. But it's not an ISDN'd G3 that whizzes and whirs here, more like a souped-up UNIVAC. No matter how inventively Trace Reading, Blazar, Birdstuff, and Coco update "Rebel-'Rouser" and "Raw-Hide," it's still novelty they bank on.

That doesn't mean the retro-futurism shtick lacks moments of amusement or invention. The guys are adequate arrangers; Eeviac has its share of unusual voicings that help steer the music away from rudimentary raucousness -- the cool, musicianly way of voicing the chorus riff on "The Reversal of Polarity," for instance. But given the competition of more mature rockstrumental combos like Pell Mell, MORAM? remain one-dimensional. Only those with robotic sympathies will fully embrace this disc. In fact, "Engines of Difference" sounds like a jukebox tune that Futurama's Bender might punch up after a few too many quarts of WD-40 down at the cyber tavern.

-- Jim Macnie